Marcos D. Alves

Excuse me for taking your time and revisiting this point, but I need to vent.

I am a paying Proton Unlimited user; it is not yet in full production, meaning I have not yet migrated my legacy email accounts. I have paid for a full year and have already budgeted for renewal at the end of the year in case I decide to continue with it. I also have a paid Fastmail account and a Tuta account, which I recently downgraded to the free tier.

What is bothering me is the case involving Andy Yen and his comment about a nomination made by Donald Trump. I do not know Andy nor the person he praised, but I understand it was a personal opinion and that he was referring to a specific individual, not endorsing the current US administration.

However, the way the (fake) crisis was handled by Proton and Andy seemed very amateurish, in my opinion.

I frequently search for information about Proton, Fastmail, and Tuta on Mastodon, Bluesky, and their subreddits, looking for tips and use cases. When people looking to leave Google ask for recommendations, the answers almost always mention Proton, Fastmail, Tuta, and a few others. BUT—and this is a big BUT—the negative mentions of Proton are too frequent, far more than the positive ones, in my view; this email to you was triggered by a thread on Bluesky: someone asked for recommendations, another suggested Proton, and a third person replied that they would not recommend Proton because the CEO allegedly supports the current US administration.

To commit to a long-term service, I need to feel comfortable with it in terms of technical aspects (1) (whether it meets my needs), financial aspects (2) (whether I can afford it), and moral aspects.

Reading, across all channels, about the CEO’s alleged support for an administration that seems destined to harm humanity makes me feel uneasy, even though I know the claim is false; it is so strong and uncontrollable that I question myself whether it is OK to continue with Proton or leave it immediately. It is the power of fake news.

I am not in a hurry to migrate my email and calendar accounts, and I still have 10 months of Proton Unlimited left — plenty of time to decide what to do.

I do not have any specific suggestions or recommendations for you. Your PR team may already be aware of the impact on Proton’s image and hopefully knows what to do. But whatever action is taken, it must be done quickly.

Regards,

PS:

(1) Proton Unlimited is quite expensive for me, even when paying in my local currency—much more expensive than Fastmail and Tuta.

(2) It does not yet meet my needs; missing features on Calendar push me to another service.